Circus Shoes (15 page)

“Go on about the horses. You said when they were tired after a voyage, you still had to work at tumbling.”

“That’s right. We worked when we were traveling, too. I remember that first time we went to America. I was sick the whole way over. I was only a nipper, but dad said, ‘Have him up on deck. I’ll just take him through a routine. Do him good.’”

“Did it?” asked Santa.

Ted thought over the question.

“Not that trip. But maybe later. Fine teacher, my dad. Never believed in bringing kids up soft.”

Peter wriggled more comfortably into his seat.

“Then when did you learn to do things on a trapeze?”

Ted gazed at the ceiling as if he were trying to remember.

“We were over in Stockholm. We were working the jockey act. The horse went false. Dad was bearer. You know, like my brother does, holding the rest of us on his shoulders. Dad slipped. I was at the top of a pyramid. Down I came and broke my hip. They had to leave me in hospital. Well, while I was there they brought in another fellow from the circus. German he was. He’d been doing a flying trapeze act, and missed the catcher and broken his arm.”

Santa hated to interrupt, but she hated more not understanding.

“What’s a catcher?”

“Someone who catches. If you look at an aerial act, you’ll see there’s always one doing the catching.”

Peter frowned at Santa for muddling the story.

“Do go on.”

“Well, lying in bed with nothing to do, we got to talking. The act he was with had got someone in his place. Nor was he crazy to go back to them. He had a trapeze, and he’d worked out a nice routine for a double act. He suggested I come in with him.”

Santa was aghast.

“But you had a broken hip and he had a broken arm and you’d never been on a trapeze.

Ted got up. “Must be dinner-time. My hip mended and his arm got all right. I soon picked up the routine. We did very nicely.”

Santa caught at his coat.

“When did you go back to your father and brothers?”

“When dad died. The four of us took on the horses.” He held out his bag of sweets. “Have another? You should, they’re cooling to the blood. You need them in the spring.”

“Will you really teach me to tumble?” Santa called after him.

Ted did not exactly answer, but he gave a kind of nod as he went out.

Peter and Santa got up to go to lunch. They walked round the ring fence and out through the front en trance.

“Do you really want to learn to tumble?” said Peter. “What for?”

Santa hopped over a guy-rope and opened the gate in the fence.

“To have something to do while you’re riding.” She shut the gate in his face. “Bet I get back to the caravan first.”

Gus had the stew nearly ready. Peter and Santa laid the table. Gus looked round from his stirring.

“We’ve all the kids coming to tea.”

A cold feeling gripped Santa’s inside.

“Why?”

“Cabbages and cheese! Why not?” Gus tasted the stew and added a little more pepper. “It’s a good day for it; no performances.”

Peter knew what was worrying Santa.

“Fifi doesn’t have tea, and I don’t believe the Petoffs do. And the Schmidts drink coffee.”

Gus put three plates on the stove to warm.

“But they can they can eat hot cross buns, can’t they,” He nodded at an enormous bag on the floor in the corner. “Just been out an got two dozen of them.”

Santa put the cruet stand on the table. She looked at Gus with suspicion.

“What made you ask them?”

Gus gave is stew a final stir.

“Seems you told the kids you could play the violin. They’ve gone home and told their dad and mum you can play the violin. Now the whole circus has heard you can play it. Well, if you can, what’s the harm in your doing it?”

Santa held out a plate for him to fill with stew.

“But I can’t.”

“Then why did you say you could?”

Santa’s eyes filled with tears.

“Well they were saying Aunt Rebecca had taught us nothing, that we were like new-born babies.”

“I see.” Gus turned to Peter. “Is that why you said up at your school that you’d had a tutor to teach you Latin?”

Peter looked at Santa with her flushed face and held-back tears. He saw red.

“All right, laugh. Perhaps everything we’ve been taught is wrong. But at least we aren’t sneaks, coming home and telling all the circus what somebody said at school.”

Gus filled the other two plates with stew. He sat down. He looked apologetic.

“Look here. I don’t want to be hard on you kids. But you don’t seem to have any horse sense. You come up here dressed for Buckingham Palace-“

“That’s mean!” said Santa “The moment we knew boys didn’t wear gloves here, Peter never wore them again.”

Gus sighed.

“That’s right. But it seems funny to me you didn’t know it anyway. Then this tutor business.” He took a mouthful of stew “Can’t you see you go about things all wrong? I never have known what’s the good of Latin, but as sure as eggs, if there’s any good in it, then it’ll turn up handy. One day somebody’ll say, “Anybody know Latin?’ Then you just say ‘Yes,’ and there you are.”

“I had to say something,” Peter burst angrily. “The boys were saying I didn’t know anything.”

“What if they did?” Gus finished chewing his mouthful. “Maybe they’re not far out. But, boy, why do you want to go telling the dancing-girls that they couldn’t help with the pull-down? You had them all laughing fit to split their sides. They’ve christened you little Lord Fauntleroy.”

Peter scowled at his plate.

“I don’t see why.”

Gus ate a moment in silence. Then he looked up.

“There’s none of us can see ourselves. But there are people going around just asking to have their legs pulled. You’re like that and you want to watch your step. Don’t go talking silliness. It’s all right to speak nicely and be clean and all that. But you want to look as if you could give someone a sock on the jaw if you had to.”

“Well, perhaps I could. You don’t know that I couldn’t.”

Gus nodded.

“That’s right. Perhaps you could. All I know is when I was your age if I’d found myself in a circus I’d be around with the men or the other boys. I wouldn’t be walking around with my sister looking as if I’d come to sing in the choir.”

Santa got up to get more stew.

“It’s no good trying to separate Peter and me. We’re used to each other. And you like us to be clean, other wise why are you always sending us to the public baths?”

Gus looked at the stewpot.

“Give me a bit more of that while you’re up, Santa.” He passed her his plate. “I’m no good at putting what I mean into words. I don’t want you to get me wrong Peter.”’

Peter looked at him bitterly. “I shouldn’t think I could.”

Gus took his plate back from Santa.

“Can’t you really play that fiddle?”

“Only one tune, and that very badly.”

Gus laughed.

“Puts me in mind of a clown who was once with us. He wasn’t much of a clown. Never knew how he got round Mr. Cob to take him on. But could he talk! To hear him, there was nothing that man couldn’t do. One day old Ben hears him criticizing the jockey act. ‘You ride?’ Ben asks. ‘Ride!’ the clown, Fred his name was, laughed. ‘Ridden since I could stand.’ Well Ben says nothing more at the time, but he goes to Mr. Cob and together they fix a joke. All the circus is in on it. ‘Fred,’ says Mr. Cob, ‘I hear you ride. There’s a horse I want broken in. Would you come in the ring in the morning and see what you can do with it?’ Well, Fred tries to find an excuse. But it’s no good. Mr. Cobb keeps saying, ‘Just as a favor, Fred.’ In the end he has to say he’d be there.”

“Goodness! Could he ride?” asked Santa.

“Him! No. Didn’t know the back end of a horse from the front.”

Peter laid down his fork and knife.

“Why wasn’t he killed then?”

Gus chuckled.

“That next morning we were all there. All the men and everybody. There was Ben holding the horse. It was kicking and rearing all over the place. Fred took one look at him and turned the color of a lettuce. But it was no good. Ben was there, and he and Mr. Cobb heaved him on. He was in such a state he looked like a sack of coals. Ben gave the horse a slap on the Bank. Away they went into the ring. Laugh! I never saw such a sight. I thought I’d split.”

“But didn’t he fall off?” asked Santa. Gus chuckled at his memories.

“He couldn’t. While Mr. Cob and Ben were fussing around getting him up they’d slipped round him. Specially made, it was. A right thing he never noticed, being in the state he was. Well, first buck and he’s sent flying, but not on the ground, for the boys pulled on the lunge rope and there he is dangling in the air. Then they caught the horse and back he’s put again. Must have gone on putting him on best part of half an hour. Then in comes one of the Kenets. They can hang onto anything. Gets up on the horse, and rides him round as if he’d got him out in the park. We never heard much talk from Fred after that.”

Peter and Santa washed the lunch dishes. They looked round the circus. A holiday peace was over it. The children’s voices could be heard playing round the big top. There was some barking from the poodles. One of the horses neighed. Otherwise everybody was resting a while. Their minds were on the argument at lunch.

“It’s funny,” Santa whispered at last. “Being here is the nicest thing that ever happened to us, but it keeps getting spoilt somehow.”

“Anything would be with Gus,” Peter said bitterly. “He isn’t even fair. It’s not my fault we’ve been brought up differently from the way Gus was. I say things wrong, but they weren’t wrong when we lived with Aunt Rebecca. How’m I to know?”

Santa washed out a teacup. They always had tea after lunch. Gus liked it.

“Gus doesn’t mean it. He means to be nice.”

“Funny way to show it. It’s all right for you. It’s me minds.” He leaned over the basin to Santa, and whispered, “I’m going to ask Ben not to tell him he’s teaching me ride. If he knew he’d bring people to laugh.”

Santa nodded.

“That’s a good idea. But Gus is often it the big top. Won’t he see?”

“No. Some of the horses are exercised early. I’ll get Ben to let me learn then.”

Santa said nothing. She thought it a good idea. It was just what Gus wanted. Peter going off alone. Queer how lately people kept trying to separate them. Not that they could, but she wished they would not try.

Olga, Sasha, Fritzi, Hans, and Fifi came tearing along to tea at half-past four. They could not comfort ably all have tea in the caravan, so the boys sat on the steps and Gus passed out buns as they wanted them.

“Has your violin come safely, Santa?” asked Olga.

“Good deal too safely to please Santa,” said Gus. “She says she can’t play it.”

Fifi laid down her bun. She shrugged both shoulders and lifted both hands.

“Impossible! Why should one travel with a violin which one cannot play?”

“But I didn’t travel with it,” Santa protested “I left it behind.”

“You said that you could play,” Fritzi broke in. “How is it then you cannot?”

Sasha stuck his head in at the door.

“Have you got a mood, Santa?”

Peter pulled him back.

“Shut up you fool. She can’t play. She makes an unearthly noise.”

Hans shook his head.

“Always it so is. There is one artiste in the family the rest they cannot understand.”

Peter took a large bite of bun.

“Nonsense.”

As soon as they had finished with tea Gus pointed in the direction of the violin case.

“Come on, Santa, tune up.”

“But no.” Fifi jumped up. “I must fetch papa and
maman
. They too wish to hear her play.”

“That is so.” Hans climbed down the caravan steps. “Mine father and mother they too her will hear.”

Fritzi nodded comfortingly to Santa.

“They the music understand.”

Santa went miserably to the corner and took out the violin. The E string had broken. She looked in the box part at the end of the case and found a new one. Most unwillingly she fastened it. How awful this was going to be. How she wished the caravan would fall over or something, anything so that she need not

The Moulins and the Schmidts arrived. Gus, with a twinkle in his eye, put chairs for them outside. He put down a rug so the children could sit on the ground. He made Santa stand on the caravan step where they could all see her.

Santa rosined and tightened her bow. She had tuned the violin as well as she could, but she did not have much ear and was lost without a piano to give her an A and she put the velvet pad into her neck. Then she looked beseechingly at Gus.

“Please. I can’t. You know can’t.”

Gus grinned.

“Come on. You told the other kids you could. Now let’s hear you.”